South Korea's medical tourism industry reached unprecedented heights in 2024, with the number of foreign patients nearly doubling on-year, according to government data released Wednesday.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare’s data puts the number of foreign patients at 1.17 million, dramatically increasing from the 605,768 recorded in 2023.
It also marks the highest number since 2009, when South Korea first allowed medical institutions to promote their services to foreign patients not covered by the National Health Insurance system.
Foreign patient numbers had been growing steadily at an average annual rate of 23.5 percent before 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic decimated medical tourism worldwide. The local sector has since rebounded, with the total number of medical tourists over the past 16 years now surpassing 5.05 million.
Japanese nationals comprised the largest group of medical tourists at 37.7 percent, followed by Chinese at 22.3 percent, Americans at 8.7 percent, and Taiwanese at 7.1 percent.
The data also showed the overwhelming popularity of dermatology treatments, which accounted for 56.6 percent of all visits last year. Some 705,044 foreign patients sought dermatological care in South Korea, with plastic surgery ranking a distant second at 11.4 percent.
The dermatology trend was particularly pronounced among Taiwanese patients, whose visits to dermatology clinics soared by 1,017 percent. Chinese and Japanese patients also showed strong interest in dermatological treatments, with increases of 278.8 percent and 155.2 percent, respectively.
ssh@heraldcorp.com
